


Detour

by brynnmck



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Academy hijinx, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-07-12
Updated: 2005-07-12
Packaged: 2017-12-14 06:37:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/833858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brynnmck/pseuds/brynnmck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>"He’d laughed at her when she’d suggested the bet, but he hadn’t turned her down; this was going to be the easiest money he’d ever made."</i>  Lee, Kara, and a survival exercise at the Academy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Detour

**Author's Note:**

> Much thanks, as always, to the amazing [](http://danceswithwords.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://danceswithwords.livejournal.com/)**danceswithwords** for the beta, and for repeatedly answering the same question, asked several different ways. :)

“Kara. Just accept it,” Lee needled his friend, enjoying the opportunity to twist the knife as she struggled to get her bearings.

She refused to look at him, but he caught a quick glimpse of the wry twist of her mouth as she paused to run her fingers over the bark of a nearby oak. “I’m not accepting a damn thing, Lee. I know I’ve seen this tree before.”

“Yes, except for the fact that it looks like every other tree in this frakking forest, and while you may be hot shit in the cockpit, your navigational skills while on the ground leave a lot to be desired.” He had no idea what had possessed her to claim she could find her way out of the Achillan Forest without the aid of their standard-issue compass; they were still in the early stages of survival training, but even so, the exercises were designed to require them to use as many of their resources as possible.

Of course, he knew that the easiest way to get Kara Thrace to attempt something was to tell her she couldn’t, and the day was clear and bright and something about the sun always seemed to bring out the crazy in her, especially since they’d been cooped up at the Academy cramming for exams for the past two weeks. She’d been mischievous and manic all day, and he’d caught more than a hint of her mood. He’d laughed at her when she’d suggested the bet, but he hadn’t turned her down; this was going to be the easiest money he’d ever made.

“‘Hot shit in the cockpit’?” she repeated, her tone mocking. “Wow, Lee, that’s like a little poem. Is there no end to your talents?”

He ignored the attempt at misdirection. “Well, apparently we’ve discovered an end to yours. Admit it. We’re lost, and you suck at this, and you owe me twenty credits.”

“Please don’t make me kick your ass. We’ll be late for the rendezvous.”

“It’s sad, really,” he continued, taking on a contemplative, oratorical tone. “We had such high hopes for Kara Thrace. She showed promise from an early stage, despite a rebellious nature—”

She turned her head to give him a warning look, but she was grinning. “Lee—”

“—that landed her in the brig a record eight times her first year. She barely managed to scrape by in her classes—”

“—keep talking, flyboy—”

“—but in a Viper, she was unusually skilled.” She stopped walking at that, turned to him and raised a suspicious eyebrow at the compliment. He didn’t disappoint her. “Skilled enough, in fact, to become the second-best pilot in her class, right behind the truly astonishing Cadet Adama. Actually—”

He had just enough time to catch the amused, fierce glint in her narrowed eyes before she growled, “Oh, no, that’s it, you are going _down_ —” and rushed him, plowed her shoulder into his stomach. He buckled, laughing, but kept his balance, tried to hook a foot around her ankle as she shoved him toward the nearest tree. They hit the tree with a thump, and he used the leverage to pry her arms from his waist, grab her wrists and force her back. She shrieked with laughter, and they wrestled and stumbled, their shouts and grunts echoing through the trees, until she caught her foot on a root and went down hard on her back.

He fell with her, of course, landed on top of her with enough force to rattle his teeth. Panting, he levered himself up on his arms to look down at her flushed face. “You OK?”

She was breathing hard, too, and still grinning, and for some reason, out of nowhere, he felt an unfamiliar flare of heat twist through his stomach. He’d always liked her smile, had seen it express everything from joy to mockery to fury, but somehow seeing it from this angle, with the sun dappled across her face and her eyes bright with laughter, hit him like a slap in the face. He blinked in surprise.

Oblivious, she shoved at his shoulder. “I will be, as soon as you get off me. Lords, Adama, you need to lay off the desserts.”

“It’s all muscle,” he replied, the retort coming almost automatically as he rolled to the side, trying not to think about her in the way he was suddenly, inexplicably thinking about her. _Been too long for you, Lee_ , he told himself firmly. Raven, one of the third-year pilots, had been flirting with him in the mess the past month or so; he hadn’t intended to pursue it, seeing as she seemed to be working her way through most of the top male pilots and he wasn’t particularly interested in being another notch on her bunk, but maybe a little casual tension release was exactly what he needed.

“Hey.” They were lying side by side now; Kara turned her head to look at him. “You OK?”

He wrenched his thoughts back to the task at hand. This mission was worth a good portion of their grade, and Kara was his best friend, and no matter what kind of mood they were in, he had no business indulging bizarre hormonal detours. “Yeah. I’m fine. You provided a nice soft cushion.”

She stuck her tongue out at him, and he could tell she was considering jumping him again, so he levered himself upright, brushed the dirt off the front of his shirts and his bare arms. His flight suit was a little warm, tied around his middle, but the scenario was that they’d crashed their Vipers, so the suits were the required dress. “It’ll be dark before too long,” he told her, squinting up at the still-bright blue sky. “Just admit we’re lost, get out the compass and let’s get out of here. I want to get back in time to spend the twenty credits you owe me.”

He offered her a hand up and she took it, rolling her eyes as she came to her feet. “I told you, I’m not admitting anything.” But she twisted around to dig through the emergency supply pack at her waist, and he felt a smug smile spreading across his face. The money would be nice, but he couldn’t put a price on Starbuck losing a bet for once.

She was unaware of the smile, still sorting through the contents of the pack. The pack, he realized suddenly, that had been underneath them when they’d hit the ground. “I’m not admitting anything, Lee,” she muttered, only halfway paying attention to what she was saying, “because we are not… frakking…”

She stopped abruptly, stared at something in her hand. “ _Oh_ ,” she breathed.

He was starting to get a very bad feeling about this.

When she turned her head to look at him, her wide eyes told him everything he needed to know. The fact that the remains of what had once been their compass were lying crumpled in her hand seemed superfluous, even excessive.

She just blinked at him for a second, horrified. Then she grinned guiltily, with just a hint of that insane Starbuck glee that he loved and hated. “Actually, now that you mention it…”

“ _Frak_ ,” he said feelingly, and tried not to strangle her as she dissolved into helpless giggles.

 

* * * * *

 

A couple of hours later, Kara was finding the situation much less amusing. It was nearly dark, for one thing, and the temperature had already dropped several degrees. She wasn’t exactly sure when it had started raining, but was pretty sure it had been going on for at least half of her life, and while their flight suits were theoretically waterproof, she’d still somehow ended up soaked to the skin. She was wet and cold and miserable and they were going to fail this exercise and she’d never live it down, not to mention that she owed Lee her last twenty credits now, and—

“I thought those compasses were supposed to be unbreakable,” Lee offered in the exceptionally unhelpful way he had, his boots squelching through the mud as he trudged along next to her.

“Obviously not,” she gritted, reminding herself that killing him would only ensure that she’d fail Colonial Geography as well as Survival Training.

“I’m just wondering… did you catch it on a rock, do you think, or—”

She whirled to glare at him, thought briefly that the effect was probably diminished by the hanks of hair that hung, dripping, in front of her eyes. “I don’t frakking care _how_ it happened, Lee, it frakking _happened_ , and now we’re stuck out here in the middle of frakking _nowhere_ , and that’s what I’m concerned about at the moment.”

Lee was normally extremely difficult to provoke—though the Lords knew she tried often enough—but the cold and the rain and their impending failure had gotten to him, too, and she could practically see his temper fraying. “It matters how it happened,” he ground out, “because if there’s a flaw in the design, we should report it; it could put other people in danger.”

She barked a laugh, threw out her hands. “We’re the ones in danger, Lee! Us! Right now!”

He rolled his eyes. “Unless there’s something in this rain we don’t know about, the only danger we’re in is that being stuck out here with you might finally drive me completely insane. They’ll send out a patrol for us in the morning—the soldiers who take those faulty units into battle won’t have that option.”

He was trying to stay calm, which only pushed her own temper from simmer to boil. “Gods, you are so frakking useless sometimes, Adama,” and that was better, the quick, hard clench of his jaw. “I can’t believe we’re wandering around in the rain and the dark and all you can do is talk and talk and frakking _think_ about how this might affect some theoretical person in some theoretical future, just like you always do, like that’s any use to us _at all_ right now—”

The last thread snapped. He stepped close to her, and she half-expected to see steam coming off him as anger flared and sparked in his eyes. “Well, I figured one of us should do some thinking, Kara,” he hissed at her, “because the gods know you seem to be incapable of it.”

She didn’t even flinch, just met him glare for glare. She’d never tell him, but the sight of Lee Adama in a full-on rage over something she’d done always gave her a unique thrill—a thrill she tried very hard not to analyze. “I think when it’s necessary,” she snapped back, “but I also act. You’re always so busy—”

“Oh, your actions are frakking fantastic, when they don’t land you in hack or almost get you killed. In fact, as I recall, it was your brilliant actions that broke our only frakking compass, wasn’t it?”

“I was having fun! I know that’s against the Lee Adama Code of Being a Complete Tightass, but—”

“Yes. Fun. This is very fun, I’m so glad we get to do this.”

“It’s your job to stop me before we get to that point.”

He gaped. “My _job_?”

“Yes! You’re supposed to be the rational one, the one who sees the big picture, every possible outcome, Mr. Big Brain with your political theory and your philosophical blah blah blah—”

“Well, maybe I’m tired of that job. Maybe I’m tired of being the one who has to rein in your crazy ass when you try to pull some juvenile stunt that’ll get you tossed out, maybe I want to be the one to just do whatever comes into my head without always having to think about every single little—”

He stopped suddenly.

Derailed by the abrupt loss of momentum, she just stood there and blinked at him while the rain poured down around them.

His mouth twitched. “Wait… didn’t this argument start out the other way around?”

She pondered that for a second, ran over the last few minutes in her mind. Think, act, think, act… yep, sure enough. She raised an eyebrow thoughtfully, ran her tongue over her teeth. “Huh. I think you’re right.”

They stared at each other in silence for a moment… and, inevitably, they both cracked up at the same second. Before long, they were leaning on each other, gasping for breath, tears of laughter trickling down their wet faces.

“Gods,” Kara managed finally, wiping her eyes. “Oh, gods…” But one look at each other set them off again, and when they eventually managed to compose themselves, her sides were aching and she was warm from the exertion, at least temporarily.

“C’mon,” Lee told her, smoothing his sodden flight suit as best he could. The gesture was so ridiculous under the circumstances, yet so perfectly Lee, that she had to swallow a snicker before she got them both going again. “The light’s almost gone—let’s find a place to hole up for the night. Maybe in the morning we can find our way out of here, get at least partial credit.”

She nodded agreement, dragged their tiny night-vision binoculars out of the pack—which, after their little mishap, he’d insisted on carrying—and peered around. “Looks like there’s a rock formation over there—might be some shelter, get us out of this damn rain.”

“Good thinking.” He said it with a perfectly straight face, and she would’ve thought it was an accident except for the evil glint in his eyes.

“Oh, you’re hilarious,” she sneered, sarcasm dripping, and the sound of his self-satisfied chuckle trailed behind her as she headed off through the trees.

 

* * * * * 

 

“No good,” Lee admitted finally, tossing the flint and tinder aside in disgust. “Wood’s soaked through, I can’t get a damn thing.”

“You know,” Kara muttered from where she was sweeping away branches and leaves, clearing a space for them, “it’s pretty sad when a guy named Apollo can’t get a little fire going.”

Lee snorted. “I didn’t pick the callsign, Kara.”

“Yeah,” she smirked, “but you don’t exactly hate it, either, do you?”

Most of the time he did, and she knew it, but he knew what answer was required in this case. “Hey, if people think I’m a god, that’s not my fault.” He could do cocky every bit as well as she could; he just didn’t use the ability nearly as often.

Some perverse part of her thought cocky looked good on him, and she grinned, wiped her muddy hands on her flight suit and spread her arms wide. “God of all this,” she pronounced, indicating the tiny cave; the entire space was maybe six feet by eight feet, and she couldn’t quite stand up straight in it. Not exactly an ideal campsite, but it kept the rain off, which made it close to paradise as far as she was concerned. “You should be proud.”

“Oh, very.” He tucked the tinder carefully into the pack, pulled out their small emergency lantern instead. “Proud and pleased to be stuck in a tiny space with you all night.”

“A lot of guys would kill for that opportunity.”

“A lot of guys don’t seem to have to go to nearly that much trouble,” he shot back, taking the easy opening. He turned the knob on the lantern, and the resulting spill of pale blue light illuminated the curve of her smile. He realized that the joke was less funny to him than usual, but she didn’t seem to notice, just bumped his shoulder with her knee.

“Frak off.” She settled down next to him with a sigh, their backs against the uneven rock. They sat in silence for a moment, and she listened to the sound of the rain on the leaves. The walking had kept her barely warm enough, but now that she was still, she could feel the chill seeping into her body. She shifted uncomfortably in her wet clothes, couldn’t quite repress a shiver.

“Cold?” Lee asked, crossing his arms over his chest.

She cocked a suggestive eyebrow. “You wanna huddle together for warmth?” Her grin was wicked.

“It’s only going to get colder,” he reminded her with a shrug, deliberately ignoring the innuendo.

She snickered. “Very smooth, Adama.”

He sighed, gave her the most withering glare he could muster. “Kara. You’re covered in mud and you look like a drowned rat. I think I can restrain myself.”

“Oh, yeah?” Even in the dim light, he could see the glint of challenge in her eyes, the same expression she’d worn when he’d told her there was no way they’d get out of the forest without a compass. He caught his breath involuntarily, felt another flash of heat in his belly. “OK, then.” She hitched a shoulder, scooted closer to him. “I guess it is the _rational_ thing to do.”

The subtle dig was pure Kara, enough to rein in his straying thoughts and remind him that this was _her_ , this was Starbuck, his closest friend and the bane of his existence, and he didn’t look at her that way. He lifted an arm, intending to wrap it around her shoulders, but she slid around in front of him and before he had time to realize what she was doing, she’d settled herself between his bent legs, her back against his chest.

Kara bit her lip on a giggle and wished desperately she could see the expression on his face as she wriggled a bit, making herself comfortable. She thought she heard him make a strangled sound, and his arms hovered awkwardly on either side of her; he seemed to be having trouble deciding what to do with them. Much as she would have liked to torment him longer, she couldn’t contain the delighted cackle that burst out of her. Lords, he was such an easy target sometimes.

“At ease, Cadet,” she told him, reaching out to wrap his arms loosely around her shoulders. “Your virtue is safe with me.”

“Good to know,” he managed, forcing the words out of his suddenly-dry mouth, and he definitely should have taken Raven up on her unspoken offers weeks ago, because this was ridiculous. It was because he and Kara weren’t normally touchy-feely types, he reasoned; they’d tackle each other in Pyramid and spar in the ring, and every once in awhile they held each other up as they stumbled home from a bar, but other than that, they weren’t much on hugs and handshakes. So this, her snuggled up against his chest, was new, but it didn’t mean anything—his body was just having a very natural reaction to the proximity of a woman.

He kept telling himself that.

Kara had to admit that, despite her teasing, she liked this arrangement better. She’d never had the opportunity to notice it before, but Lee was apparently one of those guys who radiated heat, which was coming in very handy at the moment. Her wet hair was still trickling cold drops down her neck from time to time, but other than that, she was actually pretty comfortable.

In fact, she realized, she was a little more than comfortable, and she suddenly needed to fill the silence.

“I’m bored,” she announced. “There aren’t any cards in that pack, are there?”

His sigh sent a warm gust of breath along the side of her neck, and she shivered again. “Can’t sit still for ten seconds, can you? My brother was like that, too… when he was five.”

It was strange to _feel_ his voice as well as hear it, feel the vibrations from his chest against her back. It reminded her, oddly, of flying, the familiar pitch and pattern of his voice in her ear over the comm, like he was inside her head. The sensation was distracting, but every good pilot knew how to multi-task. “But my natural energy is one of the things you love about me, right?”

He chuckled. “Yes, particularly when your ‘natural energy’ results in the breaking of vital survival tools.”

Shoving her shoulder back into his, she snapped, “Would you lay off about the frakking compass? Sweet Zeus on a thunderbolt. I said I was sorry.”

“No, actually, you didn’t.”

She shrugged. “Well, whatever.”

Typical Starbuck, and he couldn’t help laughing. “You know, I think this might be worse than when you got us kicked out of the only bar in Minos.”

“The guy was cheating, Lee,” she protested, but the memory made her laugh, too. Poor Lee—all he’d wanted was a laid-back evening of cards and drinking, but once she’d started the fight, there’d been no way for him not to join in. The mental image of him, smudged with dirt and blood and trying desperately to pretend he wasn’t having the time of his life, stirred another memory.

“What about that time in Ithaca? _That_ was all you, Apollo.”

She didn’t have to see his sheepish grin to know it was there. “OK, but that guy was definitely cheating, too.”

She snorted, rolled her eyes. “It was a woman, genius. A priestess, as a matter of fact, and she wasn’t cheating.”

“I was drunk.”

“Yeah, I figured that out around the third time you hurled on my boots.” And while she hadn’t found that at all amusing at the time, in retrospect, it was really prime mocking material.

“Well, then that’s your own fault for not moving out of the way after the first time. And did I mention I was really, really drunk?”

They were both laughing now, and she just shook her head. “I have to hand it to you, Lee—when you do something, you do it right, and getting hammered and making an ass of yourself is no exception.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” he told her, enjoying the sound of her chuckles echoing off the cave walls. She only laughed harder, curling forward until he could see the tattoo on the back of her neck. Eventually, her laughter trailed off, slid into a sigh as she dropped her head back against his shoulder.

“Gods. It’s been a long day.”

He barely heard her. Her movement had brought her head very close to his, and the scent of her hit him like a sucker-punch in the gut. She smelled like rain and sweat and green, growing things, and underneath it all, a faint hint of engine grease. Without thinking, he turned his head just slightly to the side, slid his nose into her damp hair and inhaled, his mouth against her temple.

Kara froze, her relaxation turning to sharp, breathless tension in an instant. “Lee?”

“Mm?” The sound was muffled against her skin, and she knew she should sit up, but his arms had tightened across her chest and she couldn’t seem to raise her own arms to push him away. She could feel his heart starting to pound against her back.

“What are you doing?” she asked, her voice catching oddly in her throat.

“Nothing,” he murmured, “just… you smell good.” He shifted his head, wanting to see if the flavor was different down where her jaw met her neck, and she yelped and twisted away.

She ended up on her knees, facing him, and even in the dim light she could see the hurt on his face. “No, sorry, it’s just… your nose was cold. Knee-jerk reaction, sorry.”

He nodded slowly, but the hurt didn’t fade. “Lee, really, I just…” She trailed off. Starbuck was supposed to have a witty comeback for everything, but for once she was at a total loss. She tried a smile. “Gods. We’ve been friends for almost two years now, and you’re just now noticing I’m a girl? I thought you were supposed to be the smart one.”

He suddenly remembered the first time he’d seen her: they’d been at the Academy a week or two and he was on his way to the library, but the sound of raucous laughter coming from one of the bunkrooms had caught his attention. He’d stopped just outside the doorway and peered in, saw a group of cadets clustered around a girl with short blonde hair, sloppy BDUs, and a cigar clenched in her teeth. She’d been telling some story—he’d probably heard it a million times by now, he realized, though he couldn’t remember what she’d been saying—and for a second, he couldn’t look away from her. She was vital, magnetic; the room seemed too small to contain her. The sensual curve of her lips around the cigar sent a flash of heat straight to his groin.

He’d realized he was staring, shaken himself and moved on, and by the time he and Kara had become friends, he’d almost forgotten that first glimpse of her, bright and fierce and striking. She was just Kara, and he generally wanted to kill her much more than he wanted to kiss her. But now, looking at her, he realized that image had been in the back of his mind all along, waiting.

“Lee?” Her eyes were anxious, uncertain.

“I noticed,” he said quietly. Then, “I’m noticing now.”

His hair was damp and tousled; his eyes were clear, burning blue. She often teased him about his focus, the single-minded, thorough way he pursued everything that interested him. Boring, she called it; predictable. But now, finding herself the object of that intensity, she realized with a jolt that it was definitely neither of those things. Her stomach did a quick barrel roll behind her abdomen, and she was glad of the small, pale light, hoped that it would hide the rush of heat in her cheeks.

Then she realized what she was thinking, and held two hands up in front of her, shook her head firmly. “No.”

Lee blinked. “No what?”

“No, we’re not doing this. Just because it’s raining and we’re stuck in the middle of the forest at night and you’re all wet, you think this is your lucky night. Well, nice try, but forget it. I’m not that girl.” She sat back on her heels and crossed her arms defiantly.

“‘Nice try’?” His jaw dropped, indignation quickly overwhelming lust. “What, you think I planned this? You think I _like_ this? I should be in my barracks, in my nice, warm rack right about now. And instead, I am sitting in the mud, soaking wet, looking forward to a night of no sleep and a failing grade in the morning, all because you couldn’t keep your mind on the mission for ten minutes at a time and you had to frak around and break the frakking—”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Apollo, if you say the word ‘compass,’ I swear to the gods I’ll shove the damned thing up your ass.”

“Well, it wouldn’t be any less useless there.” And there was a part of him that was pretty sure that, in a week or a year, he was going to find this whole interchange pretty funny, but for now, he was seething. “Lucky night, my ass. And,” he added, warming to his topic, “while I’m at it, you’re ‘not that girl,’ my ass, too. What, would you rather I had a bottle of ambrosia and a transport out of here tomorrow? Because you sure as hell seem to be _that_ girl.”

“My sex life doesn’t concern you, Lee.”

“You’ve made that abundantly clear.”

“Well, you shouldn’t think that a little atmosphere is enough to get me to frak you, just because—”

“Who said anything about frakking?!” he shouted, even as he inwardly wondered why, exactly, her brain had gone there. He was too pissed off at her to care, anyway. Definitely. “Don’t flatter yourself, Starbuck. I had a passing thought. It passed. Now secure your enormous ego, if that’s possible, shut the frak up, and go to sleep.”

“Fine.”

“Good.”

“Thank the gods.” Kara started to throw herself on the ground and turn her back to him, realized she’d be three inches deep in mud if she did, and had to settle for putting her back to the wall as far from Lee as she could possibly get, her arms crossed over her upraised knees. She rested her head back against the wall, closed her eyes and tried to sleep. Which was, of course, ridiculous, because there was no way she was sleeping sitting up, with her ass freezing in the mud and her back chilled from the loss of his body heat.

Not that she noticed.

She cracked an eye open. Lee was mirroring her position, only he looked much more comfortable than she was. He could sleep anywhere, the bastard, just put mind over matter and dropped right off. It was disgusting. She thought his jaw might have been clenched a little tighter than usual, but in the half-light it was hard to be sure.

He had a good jaw, actually, she thought, as her other eye crept open. And exceptional arms, she had to admit, watching the fabric of his flight suit strain over the muscles. Lords knew she’d broken up enough giggling conversations about those, but that was just principle—she wasn’t blind. But the Academy was full of pretty faces, and she hadn’t exactly been lonely since she’d arrived. There was no need for her to look at Lee that way.

She had a sudden, vivid flashback to his eyes, blue and hot, focused on her with an expression she’d never seen, and she had to close her own eyes for a second, suppress a shiver.

The instant she recovered, she threw a rock at him.

“Ow!” His eyes snapped open, and he rubbed his shoulder where the rock had bounced off. “Are you twelve?” he demanded. “Are you actually twelve years old?”

“Why did you make me think about this?”

He sighed, scrubbed a hand across his face. “No one _makes_ you do anything, Kara. I gave up on that a long time ago.”

“I don’t want to think about this.” She was aiming for defiant, but she was afraid she’d hit closer to petulant. _Frak_.

Some of what she was saying seemed to be penetrating his fog of annoyance and exhaustion, and he looked at her more carefully. Her chest constricted. A hundred witty, scathing comments ran through her mind, but for once, her mouth wouldn’t move. He was silent for a long, long moment, and she could have sworn she could feel the shape of the air between them.

Finally, he smiled a little, and his expression had an edge to it, a hint of danger. “Kara. Since when do you think about anything?”

A thrill spiraled from the top of her spine all the way down to her toes, and there was more than a little fear in it, but there was challenge in his eyes and the stubborn, suicidal part of her wouldn’t let her back down. “This doesn’t make me that girl,” she said, warily, a last-ditch effort.

He nodded, and his smile went wicked. “Never said you were. You’re stalling, Kara.”

“OK.” She swallowed hard. “No thinking.”

“Right. No thinking,” he agreed, and leaned over to her on one knee, curled a hand around the back of her head, and pulled her mouth to his.

It was awkward at first, hesitant—the angle was wrong and she was kissing Lee, for the gods’ sake, and how did they get here, again?—and she almost laughed, but she was curious now, so she tilted her head to the side, shifted her weight onto one knee and rested a hand against his chest. When he ran his tongue along the inside of her upper lip, she shuddered with a sudden frisson of pleasure and pressed against him, opened her mouth wider. He made a soft, hungry sound; his grip tightened on her hair, and she didn’t feel like laughing anymore. She raised her other hand to his face, and the contrast of his cool, damp skin under her fingers and his hot, wet mouth moving over hers started a slow bloom of liquid heat between her legs. She could hear the rain pouring down outside, the steady whisper of it mingled with their gasping breaths.

Lee’s mind was spinning in overdrive, full of words like _yes_ and _want_ and _more_. There was also _right now_ and _inside_ , but he wanted to see her, wanted the look on her face and in her eyes, so he forced himself to ease back, let his hand fall from her neck.

She was faintly backlit from the lantern, but he could see the full, wet curve of her lips, and her eyes were wide and soft. Her hand was still fisted in the front of his flight suit. It took everything he had not to lean forward and kiss her again, but he waited, watching her reaction. She just stared at him for a minute, breathing hard. Then she suddenly grinned and burst into giggles, and there was his friend Kara again, but she was also the woman who’d been sighing into his mouth just a moment ago and it jolted him, like some kind of bizarre double vision.

“What just happened, there?” she asked, breathlessly, rocking back to rest on her heels.

He smiled a little and shook his head, settled back against the wall again. “No idea.”

She tsked, “What? You mean you don’t have some elaborate thesis about hormones and the dynamics of friendships between men and women and the statistical probability of—”

“Shut up, Kara,” and he kicked out at her halfheartedly, but she just laughed and shoved his foot away. It almost felt like nothing had happened, but it had, and even though he knew he should probably quit while he was ahead, he knew what she tasted like now, and this wasn’t enough.

Their laughter faded gradually into silence, and Kara realized she was holding her breath. Lee was watching her with a combination of affection and heat that tempted and terrified her. Retreat was her first instinct, but it was dark and raining and she had no idea where she was, and when he opened his mouth to say something that she knew would put them past the point of no return, she figured she pretty much had two options.

And for some reason, she couldn’t quite bring herself to hit him.

So even as she told herself what a very, very bad idea it was, she grabbed a handful of his flight suit, pulled herself to him, and whatever he had been going to say melted into her mouth on a groan.

The force of it knocked his head back against the rock, but he couldn’t bring himself to care; he felt starved for her already, and he would happily have rolled off a cliff as long as he could still feel her tongue sliding against his. But no, there was something he’d been going to say, something he needed to say, and he tore his mouth away before he lost all capacity for speech.

“Kara—”

“Just _shut up_ , Lee,” she gasped, but when she kissed him again, it was more need than fear, and this bad idea was getting worse all the time but she couldn’t seem to stop. She crawled over his lap, straddled him; rocked her hips into his and forgot how to breathe. His mouth went slack for a second and a shiver ran through his body, trembling against hers, then he took a deep breath and his teeth scraped lightly along her jaw. He was talking again, only this time it was just her name, “ _Kara, Kara_ ,” over and over again against her neck and that was more than all right. One of his hands snaked up between them to tug the zipper of her flight suit down to her waist. He pressed his mouth to her exposed collarbone, still slightly damp with rain, and her heart beat hard against her ribs when he slid his fingers under her tank, against her bare skin.

His senses were so overwhelmed he was having trouble separating sight from sound from scent from taste, so it took him several seconds to realize there was noise coming from behind Kara’s back that definitely wasn’t natural to the Achillan Forest. His hand froze on her ribs, just under her breast, and he managed to focus just enough to hear,

“Well, but I can see you’re busy, so…”

Lee did a quick mental inventory of every expletive he knew.

Kara was still, apparently, oblivious, biting his earlobe and making a frustrated sound at his lack of movement, so he pushed her away slightly. “Kara.”

“What?” She blinked, dazed and flushed and slightly pissed off, and he filed that image away for the next time he needed an ego boost. He jerked his head toward the front of the cave; she craned her neck to see.

There was a figure standing there, and she had just enough time to recognize a standard-issue flight suit before the beam of a flashlight swung into her eyes. “Starbuck?” said the figure, in disbelief.

Kara winced away from the sudden light and told herself that the rush of rage she felt was just from being nearly blinded. “Hera’s tits, Helo, point that frakking thing somewhere else.”

“Sorry.” But he didn’t sound sorry—in fact, their fellow cadet sounded extremely amused. He trained the beam on the ground in front of him and, sure enough, his teeth flashed white in the near-dark. Lee liked Helo, generally, and he certainly didn’t have anything against the other man’s teeth, but at this point he would have cheerfully knocked every one of them down his throat.

Helo whistled, shook his head. “Starbuck and Apollo. Wow. I wonder who had the pool this week?”

They’d long suspected that, but having it confirmed, especially under the current circumstances, was enough to cause Lee to blurt, “This isn’t what it looks like.”

“Oh, really?” Helo raised an eloquent eyebrow.

Kara spared a second to glare at Lee, her unique glare of now-I’m-stuck-with-your-lame-ass-story, and cleared her throat. “I fell,” she told Helo with a straight face. “He was checking for injuries.”

To his credit, the only thing that gave Helo away was a slight twitch of his mouth. He nodded solemnly. “Right. Yeah, those tonsil injuries can be a real bitch if they’re not caught early.”

“Bite me, Agathon.”

“Looks like Apollo beat me to it.”

“Helo,” Lee put in quickly, “what are you doing here?”

The other man shrugged. “Compass broke. I think it might’ve been part of the exercise, actually; there are a few of us wandering around out here. We ran into each other by luck, and since Raptor crews get the better emergency kits—” he brandished the flashlight—“I got the privilege of investigating your little blue light, there. Thought you might want to join us.” The smirk spread across his face again. “I didn’t realize you already had all the company you needed.”

Kara just fixed him with her steeliest glare, until she realized that the effect was probably hampered by the fact that she was still sitting in Lee’s lap. She scrambled up. “OK,” she said, jerking up the zipper of her flight suit in what she hoped was an inconspicuous, businesslike motion. “Let’s go, then. If you’ve got a flashlight, we might still be able to get out of here tonight.”

Helo looked a little surprised now, and his eyes flicked from Kara to Lee and back again. Then gave another shrug. “OK. We’re holed up about half a klick away.” He paused, then, “Get your gear—I’ll wait for you outside.”

“Great.” Kara bent to grab the emergency lantern. She offered Lee a hand up, but she couldn’t quite look at him. When his skin touched hers she couldn’t help but think of where those fingers had been just a couple of minutes ago, and felt a quick rush of heat over her body again. She risked a glance up at him, and the lantern in her hand illuminated much too much of what was going on in his eyes. She swallowed.

“Close call, huh?” she said, with forced cheer. Her heart was still pounding.

“Yeah.” His voice was just a little rough, like it usually was after a long session in his Viper.

He watched her throat move as she swallowed again, watched her nervous eyes and flushed face and the faint purple mark just above her collarbone. He wanted to clock her in the jaw; he wanted to kiss her breathless; he wanted to go back in time and stop the whole thing from ever happening.

“Probably just as well,” she offered. She gave him a half-smile, and the hint of sadness in it saved him. He let himself look at her for another moment with his new vision: saw her vital, magnetic, the cave too small to contain her. And then he resolutely shut the door.

“Yeah,” he lifted a shoulder, deliberately casual, “just as well,” and he almost believed it.

Her face fell a little, and he wondered about that, but then she nodded and turned toward the cave mouth, strode out to where Helo was waiting, his flashlight swinging idly. It was still raining. They followed the other cadet in silence for a minute or two, then her voice drifted back to him.

“I told you the compass thing wasn’t my fault.”

Her tone made him grin despite himself. Typical Kara. “Well, I still have a whole list of things that _are_ ,” he assured her, and she laughed, and for the moment, it was enough.


End file.
